[JustLeft]

I, like you, have moved from a pda phone to the 8830. I have posted on pinstack an issue with memory in the 8830. PM me if you would like the link. The short of it is that there is 20MB available on a virgin device. An additional 12 MB is reserved for multimedia, which cannot be reallocated (at least as far as I have found) to other uses. Also, I have noticed that there appears to be a memory leak on the 8830. The File Free slowly decreases over a period of days unexplainedly. The way to reclaim the memory is to pull the battery. This occurs even when the browser is cache empty and the browser is not used. Could be a bad program, or could be in the RIM OS. I have only 4 programs installed. Another user has a ticket opened with RIM and has informed us that he will post the results. Again PM me if you are interested. I will not cross post the link here - not interested in throwing gas on the fire!

Originally Posted by slinky

I spoke too soon... insufficient memory for just a dozen applications. Wow...

Is there any way to run some of these applications of a miniSD card? The memory limitation is pretty severe...

[junior1790]

Originally Posted by Dr. Jerry

Junior...
Who in their right mind is going to buy a BB for $350+ ...then spend another $200+ just to make it do what it should do to begin with?? If the BB is a true "business tool"...should it not be able, right out the box, to view and edit office documents? What business you know of doesn't email documents? Anyone on a Treo can read and edit Office documents....right out of the box. Should I have to spend another $200+ to have the same functionality because I have BB??
As it stands right now...the most you can do on the BB is write rudimentary emails and schedule appointments on a very rudimentary calendar. Oh...but I forgot...it's more STABLE than a WM5 device. Whoopie!!

I would and have spent that much, it works, if your hooked on blackberry and want it to be productive, spending a few bucks is really not a big deal. Though you seem a little down on blackbery, go post in a treo forum!!! I was simply suggesting a few options for a new member while most bashed the guy... If in fact the DR. dictates your profession, Im sure the $200 for the eoffice wont put you on a spam and tap water diet....

[slinky]

junior1790 - As I've said for the third time, eOffice doesn't work well. I've tried it. Additionally it's not like corporate purchasing (beaurocracy) will justify spending $200 on that which costs $30 or is free elsewhere at some point. Once I have it everyone will want it and they won't let that happen. Ironically many of the things that worked well on my PDA are totally unrelaible on my BB - e.g. chat. Why is this important? Because half my colleagues work around the world and that mode is much easier than phone calls in many respects.

Guys and especially why1504 and Canuck BB, great posts and thanks. Yes, apparently the BB has not taken great leaps to go beyond where it functions well besides being a very good integrated email client, contacts manager and occasional web browsing - although Opera is far better than anticipated. The fact that BBs JUST NOW got an external storage device I think says it all. While it's difficult for some here to accept, the BB is - in a way - even further behind as an extensible phone than even US consumer phones where applications have been developed to make use of the storage and extensibility. It will take time to get there as will software development for the platform and <sigh> it appears I must wait and find ways to extend the capabilities of the 8830, which I'm doing to some extent.

I realize and accept that the challenge for me is even more impacting than for many of you because I work in the mobile phone industry (e.g. content delivery, etc.) which is a market that doesn't really consist of Blackberry devices at all. US models are behind the rest of the world but the BB is by far an archaic device in terms of flexibility atm -- although it definitely excels at the above tasks above and beyond virtually all other platforms. But business has quickly moved beyond just those two requirements, as evidenced by the numerous apps also for "play shifting" - you can turn your home PC into your server for all of your documents. It's as cheap as $20-30 to take your office with you anywhere you travel, including your entire media colleciton.

In my industry I get to see the trend moving quickly. MS is starting to make a dent in the BB market (the iPhone will not.) The fax did it to traditional paper and the BB did it for email. I just got a question from my boss to send the info of someone who had some info on an email chain. With a PPC/Palm or most devices, you store your docs and emails on the device utilizing the great SD card memory available. The BB cannot simply store your emails and their attachments as docs on your storage card and call them up on demand. I ask you my fellow Blackberry owners, how many times do you wish you hadn't deleted that email which had the attachment?

Apparently the BB system was designed to be a simple client polling a server to provide you with what you need. Every app I've seen seems to work on the infuriating ASP model and you can't really use your device yet for device end processing. Regarding the Treos - I have no idea why so many are complaining about the unreliability. If you keep it clean like the BB, it seems to function just fine. The reason why BBs work "better" are because you can't put a great deal of software on them, including some poorly coded apps that can play havoc with your system. They went down for a few minutes sometimes but no longer than BB has gone down since I got mine last week!

So in summation, I'm doing my best to get most of the basic "portable office" functionality I've gotten from my other devices. I see some of you still carry both of them. As I'm moving along, I'm enjoying the integration and efficiency of contacts/email but there are still a few things killing me that some of you are raising:

(1) The 8830 (and probably the curve) seem to have a serious internal storage problem. I can only install 6-8 apps before I get out of memory errors. That's not good. Dictionaries are stored unfortunately in the internal memory and I had to remove them to create storage. No offense but this is inexcusable. I can't even add the few applications that I would buy in here without a problem!

(2) I've removed some excess which is not easy to do on the BB. Get rid of the sample movie. Get rid of the help files and the other language files. I'm trying to figure out which apps I can dump as well and am debating the password one. BB Messenger and browser seem almost useless but I'm wondering if keeping them there as default is important.

(3) Battery life is OK but I can't find an extended battery that is the same form factor for the 8830. On my Treo 700p battery life was easily as good (maybe better) than the 8830 and also likely to do with an extended battery of same form factor.

(4) Still no native document viewer. eOffice is incredibly complex but doesn't do the simple things well and I couldn't open my office documents with the demo even after I got it installed. MobiPocket unfortunately stores every "converted" document internally and not on the SD card. This is a problem.

(5) Apparently my BB has appended a <<--PalmData__dat>> entry on the bottom of every single contact. Has anyone figured out a way to clear this text from the entire phone book? Takes up extra space and is annoying if you want to add data in all my over 1,000 contacts.

(6) No free tethering. This one is a killer. Work won't pay the $40 extra for laptop usage. It's another "luxury" that if I get, everyone will have to as well and the BB is supposed to be your mobile device, air cards on occasion during travel. I'll live with this but I'll probably end up needing to resign up for some wifi account... I'll miss the freedom.

That's all for now. Thanks again guys for helping ease the transitional pain of going from a great power user to having a noticeable amount of improved efficiency with email/contacts but at a real cost. Hopefully I'll help provide ways to beat the RIM system here like I'm trying to do...

[why1504]

Slinky,

Two other things I failed to mention is security and market penetration. The Blackberry is almost exclusively the PDA Phone within DoD and US government. This is based on the security capabilities of Blackberry. This is a double edge sword, less software based on RIM's largest client requirements. Also, 3 months before the 8830 hit the market I looked @ the new Palm/PPC phones and other offerings to pick up more functionality. I couldn't get there. I have friends who have gone from BB to PPC and all (100%) regretted it. Also, large corporations have big bucks in BES, and it works. They don't want to go through the pain and expense of a new system without order of magnitude improvements. This all is based on stability of the handsets and BES (BIS and Desktop Redirector work well also but BES is what powers BB to is highest functionality). Handset stability is unequaled, I have yet to do a full blown hard reset dumping memory and rebuild on the 8830. On the 7250 I did this once in 30 months. With the other devices, I was lucky to get by with one reset a month, usually this occurred once a week, and several soft resets. Now, if I was at the office, or it was late in the evening and I was headed into the office the next day, this wasn't a big deal. If I was 1500 miles away, well thats a different story. With the PPC I always carried the laptop in case of a meltdown so that I had my contacts, and access to mail. With the BB I usually don't carry the laptop on 1-3 day trips. IMHO, this is why the BB is so loved. Now, if Palm/PPC get their act together with stability, and can convince the market they equal BB here, they may knock BB off if the business functionality is there. Good Luck.

[Sith_Apprentice]

I have 6 applications on my 8300 Curve and still have 24mb free. I have Jivetalk for IMing (aol, google, yahoo, msn, etc). Google Maps for mapping, BBWeather, Opera Mini, xxxxxxxxxxxxx (for syncing with google calendar) and Telenav for the times i use the external gps reciever. In addition to this there is a bunch of stuff that came installed on it from ATT (which i will remove here shortly since they are all but useless to me). I can view any standard Office attachments and PDFs with no problem. Granted, I cannot create any, but if this were a big deal to me, then i would weigh that against the cost of eoffice. I have not played with the 8830 on Verizon, but i know my 8800 on Tmobile has a fantastic battery life. Back to back i can watch 6 hours of video without the battery dying. The curve is a bit less than that, but seeing as how it is considerably smaller, i take this as a good tradeoff. With the palmdata_dat at the end of each file, did you migrate directly through the Desktop Manager, or did you sync with Outlook First? Free tethering is available on some carriers and not on others. Tmobile for instance does not charge for tethering on the blackberry. This isnt a function of the blackberry itself, and i would say is unfair to include in the limitations of the device.


Feel free to PIN message me or BB message me if you have any more questions both of my PINs are listed below and to the left.

[junior1790]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8300/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

Originally Posted by slinky

junior1790 - As I've said for the third time, eOffice doesn't work well. I've tried it. Additionally it's not like corporate purchasing (beaurocracy) will justify spending $200 on that which costs $30 or is free elsewhere at some point. Once I have it everyone will want it and they won't let that happen. Ironically many of the things that worked well on my PDA are totally unrelaible on my BB - e.g. chat. Why is this important? Because half my colleagues work around the world and that mode is much easier than phone calls in many respects.

Guys and especially why1504 and Canuck BB, great posts and thanks. Yes, apparently the BB has not taken great leaps to go beyond where it functions well besides being a very good integrated email client, contacts manager and occasional web browsing - although Opera is far better than anticipated. The fact that BBs JUST NOW got an external storage device I think says it all. While it's difficult for some here to accept, the BB is - in a way - even further behind as an extensible phone than even US consumer phones where applications have been developed to make use of the storage and extensibility. It will take time to get there as will software development for the platform and <sigh> it appears I must wait and find ways to extend the capabilities of the 8830, which I'm doing to some extent.

I realize and accept that the challenge for me is even more impacting than for many of you because I work in the mobile phone industry (e.g. content delivery, etc.) which is a market that doesn't really consist of Blackberry devices at all. US models are behind the rest of the world but the BB is by far an archaic device in terms of flexibility atm -- although it definitely excels at the above tasks above and beyond virtually all other platforms. But business has quickly moved beyond just those two requirements, as evidenced by the numerous apps also for "play shifting" - you can turn your home PC into your server for all of your documents. It's as cheap as $20-30 to take your office with you anywhere you travel, including your entire media colleciton.

In my industry I get to see the trend moving quickly. MS is starting to make a dent in the BB market (the iPhone will not.) The fax did it to traditional paper and the BB did it for email. I just got a question from my boss to send the info of someone who had some info on an email chain. With a PPC/Palm or most devices, you store your docs and emails on the device utilizing the great SD card memory available. The BB cannot simply store your emails and their attachments as docs on your storage card and call them up on demand. I ask you my fellow Blackberry owners, how many times do you wish you hadn't deleted that email which had the attachment?

Apparently the BB system was designed to be a simple client polling a server to provide you with what you need. Every app I've seen seems to work on the infuriating ASP model and you can't really use your device yet for device end processing. Regarding the Treos - I have no idea why so many are complaining about the unreliability. If you keep it clean like the BB, it seems to function just fine. The reason why BBs work "better" are because you can't put a great deal of software on them, including some poorly coded apps that can play havoc with your system. They went down for a few minutes sometimes but no longer than BB has gone down since I got mine last week!

So in summation, I'm doing my best to get most of the basic "portable office" functionality I've gotten from my other devices. I see some of you still carry both of them. As I'm moving along, I'm enjoying the integration and efficiency of contacts/email but there are still a few things killing me that some of you are raising:

(1) The 8830 (and probably the curve) seem to have a serious internal storage problem. I can only install 6-8 apps before I get out of memory errors. That's not good. Dictionaries are stored unfortunately in the internal memory and I had to remove them to create storage. No offense but this is inexcusable. I can't even add the few applications that I would buy in here without a problem!

(2) I've removed some excess which is not easy to do on the BB. Get rid of the sample movie. Get rid of the help files and the other language files. I'm trying to figure out which apps I can dump as well and am debating the password one. BB Messenger and browser seem almost useless but I'm wondering if keeping them there as default is important.

(3) Battery life is OK but I can't find an extended battery that is the same form factor for the 8830. On my Treo 700p battery life was easily as good (maybe better) than the 8830 and also likely to do with an extended battery of same form factor.

(4) Still no native document viewer. eOffice is incredibly complex but doesn't do the simple things well and I couldn't open my office documents with the demo even after I got it installed. MobiPocket unfortunately stores every "converted" document internally and not on the SD card. This is a problem.

(5) Apparently my BB has appended a <<--PalmData__dat>> entry on the bottom of every single contact. Has anyone figured out a way to clear this text from the entire phone book? Takes up extra space and is annoying if you want to add data in all my over 1,000 contacts.

(6) No free tethering. This one is a killer. Work won't pay the $40 extra for laptop usage. It's another "luxury" that if I get, everyone will have to as well and the BB is supposed to be your mobile device, air cards on occasion during travel. I'll live with this but I'll probably end up needing to resign up for some wifi account... I'll miss the freedom.

That's all for now. Thanks again guys for helping ease the transitional pain of going from a great power user to having a noticeable amount of improved efficiency with email/contacts but at a real cost. Hopefully I'll help provide ways to beat the RIM system here like I'm trying to do...

Hey slinky- I was just trying to imform what some of use, not sure why you don't think it works well but to each his own. Since you said 3 times let me repeat what others in this thread have said countless times, lose the blkackberry and go back to you palm that you seem to love and post at treonauhts or whatever that site is. Have a blast hard resetting your treo 5 times a day or maybe WM6 a try, I hear you can manipulate all sorts of docs.. Here's on last idea, buy a laptop, just a thought. I apoligize for trying to help when everyone was attacking you, turns out they were right... You and dr. D-bag should get together and have a big blackberry bashing party and take some video with your treo's while doing so, then after reset number 5, e-mail the video to all your GLOBAL contacs.....

[Berry One]

Should we ask moderators to put sticky thread 'BlackBerry is not for everyone?'

It is not. Let me offset someone's 'why I hate it' with my 'why I like it.'

I like my 8800. I love it.

It is email device.
It is USB storage to keep my presentations on- no need to carry USB drive any more.
It has GPS- man, I will never buy another blackberry without GPS.

It does email really well. RIM just updated their servers and I have delivery receipts and read receipts for emails I send. Works better than IM now.
Email is better than IM for me- because of different time zones between our offices having phone calls, conference call meetings, live IM chats is not practical. Email works.

Voice activated dialing- very nice feature.

Multimedia- not interested. Saved few songs and one movie on microSD card but it is mostly to show my friends what new blackberries can do.

Camera- can live without it.

Free space on my 8800- 20MB.

Tethering- my wireless carrier does not offer it as an affordable option. I don't care- I don't carry notebook with me in my travels. Not any more. As long as blackberry roams where I go and it does, that's all I need.
My overseas travel planning always starts with checking if my wireless carrier offers blackberry data roaming in that country.

Web browsing- satisfactory for my needs. Enough to check flight status and latest news on USA Today. I've heard people can do more with web browsing on blackberry but I don't need much more.

8830 on top of what 8800 offers is first blackberry device allowing Verizon and Sprint customers travel worldwide or to most of Europe at least. CDMA/GSM, seamless switch between two networks. Very cool if you ask me.

I only carry 8800 with me, no other cell phones or PDAs.

[slinky]

Originally Posted by junior1790

Have a blast hard resetting your treo 5 times a day or maybe WM6 a try, I hear you can manipulate all sorts of docs.. Here's on last idea, buy a laptop, just a thought. I apoligize for trying to help when everyone was attacking you, turns out they were right... You and dr. D-bag should get together and have a big blackberry bashing party and take some video with your treo's while doing so, then after reset number 5, e-mail the video to all your GLOBAL contacs.....

I love it. When in doubt, bash others and things that obviously you don't know anything about. In the spirit of learning about things you don't know, as I'm trying to learn about the 8830, why don't you just keep it to yourself and READ FOR A CHANGE.

(1) For the umpteenth time - I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO USE A BLACKBERRY FOR WORK. YOU AND THE "COUNTLESS" OTHERS OBVIOUS DON'T EVEN USE YOUR BLACKBERRY PROPERLY BECAUSE YOU EVIDENTLY DON'T KNOW HOW TO READ. I hope the bold letters helped you.

(2) As others have conceded, the BB just isn't close to being there yet when it comes to doing more than email and contacts. It's excellent for that task and it's a system reliable for corporate organizations. But if you read a damn thing about what I wrote and care to keep up with where business are going, you'd just open up your eyes and just accept the fact that the BB does not perform well right now in that area. I just call it like it is and am trying to have a mature discussion.

(3) Regarding getting a laptop, it's possible that you have that much room to stick it down your pants. As I said which you should READ, the mobile device is NOT a laptop but it does a VERY GOOD job of being a convergent device to get things accomplished when you DONT have your laptop, e.g. storing your docs and emails, etc. on the SD card so you have access to READ your office when remote. Do you carry your laptop to every softball game you attend? Round of golf? Do you live in a city and commute to various places and lug your latpop with you?

For the sake of this discussion which really has been informative, just give it up. Even your own fellow long time Blackberry owners concede that there are limitations at present with what the BB can do. It does what it does very well. PPC email applications SUCK but the Palm with Snappermail I had was great.
the others. I had very few problems with the Treo and I've owned many different kinds. Many do not know how to manage their devices and, as I said which you must have NOT READ that one too. If you put in questionable applications you will have problems with a Treo. I got good apps from good developers and loved it. The only big negative was it's need to shut off the radio in the subway and the occasional daily 30 second wait while the Treo needed to say hello to the network.The problem for corporations is that they cannot limit the apps going into the device to make sure that users don't screw it up.

Now that it is out of the way - and I'm trying to be nice - I'd like to get back to a great discussion. I have GREATLY appreciated many of you who reached out to me and have been assisting me with extending the current limitations of the 8830. As I mentioned, some of this is learning curve. I'm getting close to not needing the laptop for the most part and sans the worries and I cannot thank the good people here enough for sharing their transition stories with me and there are A LOT OF PEOPLE who have made the switch from a flexible PDA to a more email/contact efficient but not nearly as flexible (yet) Blackberry.

[ArgonNJ]

Here is something that might help you out as far as documents go. Its not out yet, but I'm sure you've worked with Dataviz products on the Palm.

Documents To Go for BlackBerry: Word, Excel & PowerPoint on your BlackBerry Smartphone

[slinky]

Originally Posted by Sith_Apprentice

I have 6 applications on my 8300 Curve and still have 24mb free.... With the palmdata_dat at the end of each file, did you migrate directly through the Desktop Manager, or did you sync with Outlook First? Free tethering is available on some carriers and not on others. Tmobile for instance does not charge for tethering on the blackberry. This isnt a function of the blackberry itself, and i would say is unfair to include in the limitations of the device.

Feel free to PIN message me or BB message me if you have any more questions both of my PINs are listed below and to the left.

Very gracious offer, thank you for the help. I'll answer:

(1) Not sure about the memory limitation but apparently it shares memory and I may have had too many apps open. Thanks to you and a few others I'm slowly stuffing the few extra apps in there. Still there seems to be a more meager amount of RAM on the 8830 to install apps. I don't want it to seem like bashing but the 64MB of RAM on the 700p went far. I installed over 20 apps and had plenty of room. I'm wondering whether it was the open apps combined with dictionary files (spanish, english/thesaurus, german, italian) that caused the problem since the data isn't installed as it should be on the SD card.

(2) PalmData issue -- I am pretty sure that I installed Desktop manager and then the device just synched by itself. I would love to get rid of it somehow.

(3) Free Tethering - It is and isn't fair to compare I guess. I wouldn't call it a complaint against the BlackBerry but it's a significant loss if you're moving from any Treo and from a good number of PDAs. Apparently with the BB it's all carrier specific and I'll have to live with this or personally continue to get raped by Verizon's service plan.

Once again... I REALLY appreciate the help :D

[slinky]

Originally Posted by ArgonNJ

Here is something that might help you out as far as documents go. Its not out yet, but I'm sure you've worked with Dataviz products on the Palm.

Documents To Go for BlackBerry: Word, Excel & PowerPoint on your BlackBerry Smartphone

YES!!!!!! I only hope that this is NOT server based like what Repligo does with their desktop application. As I mentioned earlier, the idea on the BB platform is unfortunately to soak the business for recurring monthly fees. You as the consumer, who may not be covered by your company, are left with no choice but to pay these huge and needless monthly service costs. It's ONLY on the BB that exists. THANK YOU for the link. I actually have copies for Palm and PPC platform and I can tell you, bar none, this is a GREAT application that all of you here will LOVE for your 88xx series Blackberries.

I encourage all of you to sign up for this application. I guarantee that if it is desktop-based, most of you will not comprehend how you got along without it. :D

[JustLeft]

As I wrote earlier, there is a problem with the 8830. 20 MB free is not sufficient if you are loading other applications. I checked out an 8800, fresh out of the box, and it had 25 MB available. Not a significant difference, but more nonetheless. Hopefully RIM will get this situation resolved. After seeing your memory numbers, it just ticks me off!

Further, when I load an app and compare the amount of memory that is consumed vs the memory that is listed for the application, it is usually at least double. That is without launching the application.

Originally Posted by Sith_Apprentice

I have 6 applications on my 8300 Curve and still have 24mb free. I have Jivetalk for IMing (aol, google, yahoo, msn, etc). Google Maps for mapping, BBWeather, Opera Mini, xxxxxxxxxxxxx (for syncing with google calendar) and Telenav for the times i use the external gps reciever. In addition to this there is a bunch of stuff that came installed on it from ATT (which i will remove here shortly since they are all but useless to me). I can view any standard Office attachments and PDFs with no problem. Granted, I cannot create any, but if this were a big deal to me, then i would weigh that against the cost of eoffice. I have not played with the 8830 on Verizon, but i know my 8800 on Tmobile has a fantastic battery life. Back to back i can watch 6 hours of video without the battery dying. The curve is a bit less than that, but seeing as how it is considerably smaller, i take this as a good tradeoff. With the palmdata_dat at the end of each file, did you migrate directly through the Desktop Manager, or did you sync with Outlook First? Free tethering is available on some carriers and not on others. Tmobile for instance does not charge for tethering on the blackberry. This isnt a function of the blackberry itself, and i would say is unfair to include in the limitations of the device.


Feel free to PIN message me or BB message me if you have any more questions both of my PINs are listed below and to the left.

[bostonnerd]

Slinky;
You make some good points but you need to understand the audience that compromises Rim's core base. The Global 500 corporations are quite happy with Blackberry devices for some of the exact reasons you cite as limitations.

The lack of external storage is as example. The above companies don't want their sensitive information on media that can get lost, stolen, etc. There are companies that have actually "Super Glued" the USB ports of desktops and laptops to keep that from happening.

I'm on a BES and have no problems reading PDF, DOC, Excel etc. Frankly, I do it as little as possible. While a PDA is good for a day out of the office, I'm not going to spend hours in my hotel room at night reading attachments on it.

For reasons of stability the Blackberry does not have as robust development environment as WM or Palm. The more APIs they expose the more room there is for crashing systems. I've never had a Blackberry crash on me ever. Can't say the same for prior WM and Treo devices.

Blackberry devices just work. They excel in the design and operating parameters Rim has for them. By the time I pull up to the gate in Singapore, Paris, or Sydney, my updated email, schedule, contacts and tasks are waiting for me. My Admin will provide all updates that occured over the 20 plus hour flight and I can adjust as necessay. My stock quotes, business news, and weather are also there updated. Anything more then that and I'll use my laptop.

[slinky]

Originally Posted by JustLeft

As I wrote earlier, there is a problem with the 8830. 20 MB free is not sufficient if you are loading other applications. I checked out an 8800, fresh out of the box, and it had 25 MB available. Not a significant difference, but more nonetheless. Hopefully RIM will get this situation resolved. After seeing your memory numbers, it just ticks me off!

20% difference in memory capacity for what is supposed to be the same device IS VERY significant. We should find out where the 5MB is going. That amount of RAM is sufficient to add 5-10 additional applications and also provide room for your applications to function properly. That's not a small issue! Perhaps someone can address this issue on a very technical level? I'll confess that while I've seen this before with PPC devices I'm not sure how the BB is structured.

[junior1790]

Originally Posted by slinky

I love it. When in doubt, bash others and things that obviously you don't know anything about. In the spirit of learning about things you don't know, as I'm trying to learn about the 8830, why don't you just keep it to yourself and READ FOR A CHANGE.

Unfortunately i know too much about the treo, thats why i use a blackberry. Thanks for the enlightenment on smartphone usage, myself and much of the smartphone/pda using world can now realize the errors in our ways of not using our devices correctly as you stated. Thanks for opening my eyes... Like that commercial with the little girl talking to her mother (GFYS) and i mean that sincerely!!!!

[JustLeft]

It is being addressed AFAIK. There are posts in pinstack on this topic. If you haven't seen their forums, you might want to check them out at RIM Blackberry Forums - Pinstack.com. They seem a little more forgiving in that neck of the woods.

Troubleshooting memory issues on the Blackberry is much tougher to do because there are no programs (that I could find) that allow you to see what is really going on in your device. Filez and Resco Explorer on the Palm Treo, will let you see every file and the space it occupies. I have been in contact with another individual who has a service ticket with RIM on this matter. He says they are taking it seriously and working with him to replicate the issue. One thing, that would seem to be easy to do, would be to reclaim the 12 MB of space that is reserved for multimedia. I won't be watching movies on this device, just want email and some other business focused apps.

From your posts it is clear you have hit many of the shortcomings of the blackberry. My experience mirrors yours, but I am leaning towards keeping the blackberry (mine is for personal use, not given to me by my company) because of the following strengths:

1. The 8830 has excellent reception. Only phone that has come close is the Moto E815
2. The speakerphone is excellent. Easy to use and I can sit it on the seat next to me in the car and people can still hear me.
3. Bluetooth is rock solid. I have paired the phone with a Jabra JX10 and Jawbone. No static and no dropped connections.
4. There is no lag in the 8830. I can move from the Internet to the phone application and back. It is virtually instant. I just feels fast.
5. Setting up an email account was so easy I couldn't believe it. I have my own domain and was surprised that it was able to figure out the right servers to use. I only told it my email address and password.
6. The display blows the doors off my Treo, especially in sunlight.
7. The mini usb plug allows me to travel without a charger, just need the cable and a laptop. All the locations I travel to have mini usb cables, so I don't really even need to bring that.
8. I never believed I could get used to a trackball - but that transformation took less than a day. I haven't once reached for a stylus. It just feels right. Also, the 8830 can be used equally well either right handed or left handed. The trackball is in just the right place for me.
9. There are so many keyboard shortcuts that for most operations you can launch apps or operations with 1 button press. It does mean that you need a list of what they are. I went through the manual and clipped out the pages.
10. Love the way the phone app works. One ding I had on the Treo and other phones was the way they handled multiple numbers for one person. If it was a work nbr, they would show a building. If home nbr, they would show a house. If mobile nbr, they would show a cell phone. Problem for me was that they were so tiny that I couldn't tell any of them apart. The blackberry states what number it is - work, home, mobile... Much easier to see.

I am interested in any programs you find that meet your needs. Chances are I have been looking for the same thing.

Originally Posted by slinky

20% difference in memory capacity for what is supposed to be the same device IS VERY significant. We should find out where the 5MB is going. That amount of RAM is sufficient to add 5-10 additional applications and also provide room for your applications to function properly. That's not a small issue! Perhaps someone can address this issue on a very technical level? I'll confess that while I've seen this before with PPC devices I'm not sure how the BB is structured.

[slinky]

Originally Posted by junior1790

Unfortunately i know too much about the treo, thats why i use a blackberry. Thanks for the enlightenment on smartphone usage, myself and much of the smartphone/pda using world can now realize the errors in our ways of not using our devices correctly as you stated. Thanks for opening my eyes... Like that commercial with the little girl talking to her mother (GFYS) and i mean that sincerely!!!!

No offense and just calling it like it is - out of all the people here you've typed more messages but said nothing save regular self-laudatory public service announcements regarding your expertise with PDAs and Blackberry devices. You've said nothing about the devices other continued bare assertions that the Blackberry is king and the Treo sucks. Get away from the mirror and provide something useful to the conversation. Even the little girl would.

[slinky]

JustLeft - Thank you - you hit the nail on the head regarding where I am exactly. I'm going to have to keep mine and am glad to see that while there are serious shortcomings I can get it to work and stay reasonably happy.

(1) List of Essential Apps (so far after a few days)

(a) JiveTalk is a phenomenal IM client, if you need it. For $30 it's a steal.
(b) MobiPocket is AvantGo and even better - if you have RAM. It downloads the entire rss feed so it doesn't need to hit the server every time you read content. GREAT for the subway or areas without reception. It is also a multi-book reader and will translate all your Palm prc and lit (PPC) files.
(c) Ascendo Money & Data Vault which is the equivalent of Quicken/Finance and Splash Wallet or any other account protection with a desktop client.
(d) PocketDay - It's the great Agendus welcome screen that gives you everything you need and then some. It's also a much better way to view and go through email without needing all the presses.
(e) VR+ Voice Recorder - Apparently voice recording is free. Sending the voice as an attachment costs money. Well worth it.
(f) Opera - It's actually a much better client than Blazer could ever hope to be.
(g) BeamBerry - Free native Adobe PDF Viewer
(h) Quicknote and QuickCompose - Free applications to do both composing notes and emails with one keypress.
(i) For an office suite apparently Dataviz is coming out with Documents To Go for the BB so that is the one to wait for. All the others don't make proper use of the SD card and I'm finding eOffice too expensive and not good enough of a native Office documents reader. This is still the weakest link.
(j) Not sure about a database solution yet that allows you to create simple databases like Smartlist. TrackIt looks good but is cruder than it seems and doesn't really have checkboxes. Looking at one alternative that seems buggy.
(k) Blackberry Alerts - You may not need this. Not sure if I do but I wish there was an easier way the BB would provide you with alters - it does all else rather well in the phone functionality regard.
(l) efile - It's OK. Doesn't come close to Palm utilities for file/folder management but at least it is something and it is free.

(2) I use a Jabra JX10 bluetooth. The difference between the two is small but noticeable (in favor of the BB) although people still complain of static. Pairing between the two is MUCH better on the BB.

(3) Reception is good but here is a BIG negative with the 8830 - no vibrate and simultaneous ring just vibrate first then ring. I haven't yet found a solution and have it on one vibrate and have a very loud ring tone (I got mine at Zedge: Free ringtones, free wallpaper, free themes, free downloads to Nokia and other mobile phones. where they have dozens of free MP3s.)

(4) The mini-usb is incredibly convenient. I agree with you that it is a HUGE plus and means an extra battery is virtually unnecessary since you can almost always find juice somewhere.

(5) I agree with you - trackball and space bar for navigation is fantastic. Makes it very easy although the Treo was very good.

(6) Agreed - phone book did not handle contacts nearly as well.

[JSanders]

Slinky, I may not be adult enough to carry on a conversation with you, but I duly note you're at post #57 and still making personal attacks on other users, and I am sure I will next in line (again).

And your personal attacks continue in almost each of your posts along with your victim mentality that you have to be saved from this horrible device.

This board is ripe with posts about the memory problem on some 8800, and advice on how to fix such. I have other dozen and a half additional apps on my 8800 and I have not had a memory issue (along with about 1,000 contacts and 1200 messages), but I do a routine battery pull reboot every couple days just to clear the memory, so I won't have memory problems.
Why is my 8100 Pearl losing its call logs or message logs? - BlackBerryFAQ
Additional information on memory leaks on the 8100 - BlackBerryFAQ

Your tethering issue, as you know, is your carrier and corporate issue.

As far as your <<palmdata>> problem, I would sync with Outlook, and clear that excess data in Outlook, global search replace with nothing, then re-sync with your BB.

Battery--get a car charger, and you have the wall charger. Top off the battery anytime you can. That is the recommended method for these batteries. At your desk, in your car, at home, when you are composing further personal attacks on other BBForum users--good time to top off the charge.
Also make sure what programs are running in the background. ALT + ESCAPE will show you the background applications. You should really only see the homescreen, browser, phone and addressbook, I think. Anymore, try to close out of them to save battery. Web browser on an active web page will use the battery, so make sure you close that. Google maps and BB Maps are big battery eaters, close when not in use.

Good luck.

[slinky]

Originally Posted by bostonnerd

Slinky;
You make some good points but you need to understand the audience that compromises Rim's core base. The Global 500 corporations are quite happy with Blackberry devices for some of the exact reasons you cite as limitations....

One of the best responses I have seen. We live in the age of electronic discovery so I hear you. The challenge is that the BB should be a system that can contain the documents on the devices and thus are best equipped to just have an option to increase internal storage of the purpose discussed. I understand and agree with you. I'm finding that adding the camera to the curve and "consumerizing" the BB is making a move towards the antithesis of the tool you described. There are apps that will save your docs you view on your BB - just not as hative fies. It isn't even sure where it is going any more... thanks a lot for your response.